Roy Brady; Wine Writer, Educator, Rand Corp. Analyst

Roy Brady, a wine writer, educator and wine judge at the Los Angeles County Fair wine competition, has died. He was 79.

Brady died Sunday after a stroke at his Northridge home.

A mathematician and systems analyst with Rand Corp. as well as other aerospace companies, Brady was widely known as a wine writer. He wrote regularly for magazines such as Saveur, Gourmet, Wine Spectator and the Journal of the International Wine and Food Society. For years he was the wine columnist for Architectural Digest and a contributor to the University of California Book of California Wine.

He also taught wine appreciation classes at UCLA Extension and other places.

His only book on wine, “Old Wine, Fine Wine?” was published in 1989.

Brady was a world-recognized collector of rare wines and rare wine books, especially Madeira. He donated three collections of books and other printed wine memorabilia to the Special Collections Library at UC Davis, and disposed of his wine cellar in an agreeable manner: He drank it.

“About 1989, Roy decided he had too much wine and that he might not drink it all,” recalled friend and wine merchant Darrell Corti. “So he set about to drink it, a bottle at a time.”

His wife, Elizabeth, said, “He built the cellar himself, and recently, it was hard for him to get up and down the stairs, so he was pleased when he finished off the last bottles and was able to close down his cellar.”

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Stevin Brady, and a daughter, Katherine Brady, both of Berkeley.